Tag Archives: agency

This Bee-Killing Pesticide Is Terrible at Protecting Crops

by RFDPenny790770 Posted on January 15, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In 2011, agrichemical giants Monsanto and Bayer CropScience joined forces to sell soybean seeds coated with (among other things) an insecticide of the neonicotinoid family. Neonics are so-called systematic pesticides—when the coated seeds sprout and grow, the resulting plants take up the bug-killing chemical, making them poisonous to crop-chomping pests like aphids. Monsanto rivals Syngenta and DuPont also market neonic-treated soybean seeds.

These products—buoyed by claims that the chemical protects soybean crops from early-season insect pests—have enjoyed great success in the marketplace. Soybeans are the second-most-planted US crop, covering about a quarter of US farmland—and at least a third of US soybean acres are grown with neonic-treated seeds. But two problems haunt this highly lucrative market: 1) The neonic soybean seeds might not do much at all to fight off pests, and 2) they appear to be harming bees and may also hurt other pollinators, birds, butterflies, and water-borne invertebrates.

Doubts about neonic-treated soybean seeds’ effectiveness aren’t new. In 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency released a blunt preliminary report finding that “neonicotinoid seed treatments likely provide $0 in benefits” to soybean growers. But the agrichemical industry likes to portray the EPA as an overzealous regulator that relies on questionable data, and it quickly issued a report vigorously disagreeing with the EPA’s assessment.

Now the seed/agrichemical giants will have to open a new front in their battle to convince farmers to continue paying up for neonic-treated soybean seeds. In a recent publication directed to farmers, a coalition of the nation’s most important Midwestern ag-research universities—Iowa State, Kansas State, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, North Dakota State, Michigan State, the University of Minnesota, the University of Missouri, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, South Dakota State, and the University of Wisconsin—argued plainly that “for typical field situations, independent research demonstrates that neonicotinoid seed treatments for soybeans do not provide a consistent return on investment.”

The reason is that neonic-treated soybeans wield the great bulk of their bug-killing power for the first three weeks after the seeds sprout; the major pest that attacks soybean plants, the aphid, doesn’t arrive until much later, when the soybean plants are full-grown. “In other words,” the report states, aphid populations “increase to threshold levels weeks after the short window that neonicotinoid seed treatments protect plants.”

And not only are neonics useless against soybeans’ major field pest, aphids; they may actually boost the fortunes of another important one, the slug, which is “emerging as a key pest” in the soybean belt, according to the report. Pointing to a 2015 study from Penn State researchers, the report notes that slugs aren’t affected by neonics, so they can gobble neonic-treated soy sprouts at will, accumulating the chemical. But when insects called the ground beetle—which has a taste for slugs but not soybean plants—eat the neonic-containing slugs, they tend to die. So slugs transfer the poison from the crops to their natural predator, the ground beetle, and throw the predator balance out of whack, allowing slugs to proliferate. As a result, the Penn State researchers found, neonic seed treatments actually reduce yields in slug-infested fields.

Of course, the most celebrated “non-target” insect potentially affected by neonics is the honeybee. As I reported last week, the EPA recently released an assessment finding that one particular neonic that’s widely used on soybean seeds, imidacloprid, likely harms individual bees and whole bee colonies at levels commonly found in farm fields. That’s because plants from neonic-treated seeds don’t just carry the poison in their leaves and stalks; they also deliver it in bee-attracting nectar and pollen.

While cotton is the imidacloprid-treated crop most likely to hit bees hard, soybeans, too, may pose a threat, the EPA found. The agency couldn’t say for sure, because data on how much of the pesticide shows up in soybeans’ pollen and nectar are “unavailable,” both from Bayer and from independent researchers.

That information gap may be cold comfort for beekeepers, but the agrichemical industry will no doubt seize upon it to argue that its blockbuster chemical is harmless to bees. The rest of us can savor the bitter irony that this widely used pesticide may be more effective at slaying beneficial pollinators than it is at halting crop-chomping pests.

Visit site: 

This Bee-Killing Pesticide Is Terrible at Protecting Crops

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, Green Light, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Sprout, Uncategorized, Wiley | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Bee-Killing Pesticide Is Terrible at Protecting Crops

The EPA Finally Admitted That the World’s Most Popular Pesticide Kills Bees—20 Years Too Late

by Peggy Mason Posted on January 7, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Bees are dying in record numbers—and now the government admits that an extremely common pesticide is at least partially to blame.

For more than a decade, the Environmental Protection Agency has been under pressure from environmentalists and beekeepers to reconsider its approval of a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, based on a mounting body of research suggesting they harm bees and other pollinators at tiny doses. In a report released Wednesday, the EPA basically conceded the case.

Marketed by European chemical giants Syngenta and Bayer, neonics are the most widely used pesticides both in the United States and globally. In 2009, the agency commenced a long, slow process of reassessing them—not as a class, but rather one by one (there are five altogether). Meanwhile, tens of millions of acres of farmland are treated with neonics each year, and the health of US honeybee hives continues to be dismal.

The EPA’s long-awaited assessment focused on how one of the most prominent neonics—Bayer’s imidacloprid—affects bees. The report card was so dire that the EPA “could potentially take action” to “restrict or limit the use” of the chemical by the end of this year, an agency spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.

Reviewing dozens of studies from independent and industry-funded researchers, the EPA’s risk-assessment team established that when bees encounter imidacloprid at levels above 25 parts per billion—a common level for neonics in farm fields—they suffer harm. “These effects include decreases in pollinators as well as less honey produced,” the EPA’s press release states.

The crops most likely to expose honeybees to harmful levels of imidacloprid are cotton and citrus, while “corn and leafy vegetables either do not produce nectar or have residues below the EPA identified level.” Note in the below USGS chart that a substantial amount of imidacloprid goes into the US cotton crop.

Imidacloprid use has surged in recent years. Uh-oh. US Geological Survey

Meanwhile, the fact that the EPA says imidacloprid-treated corn likely doesn’t harm bees sounds comforting, but as the same USGS chart shows, corn gets little or no imidacloprid. (It gets huge amounts of another neonic, clothianidin, whose EPA risk assessment hasn’t been released yet.)

The biggest imidacloprid-treated crop of all is soybeans, and soy remains an information black hole. The EPA assessment notes that soybeans are “attractive to bees via pollen and nectar,” meaning they could expose bees to dangerous levels of imidacloprid, but data on how much of the pesticide shows up in soybeans’ pollen and nectar are “unavailable,” both from Bayer and from independent researchers. Oops. Mind you, imidacloprid has been registered for use by the EPA since the 1990s.

The agency still has to consider public comments on the bee assessment it just released, and it also has to complete a risk assessment of imidacloprid’s effect on other species. In addition to their impact on bees, neonic pesticides may also harm birds, butterflies, and water-borne invertebrates, recent studies suggest. Then there are the assessments of the other four neonic products that need to be done. Frustrated at the glacial pace of the EPA’s deliberations, a coalition of beekeepers and environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday demanding that the agency withdraw its approvals for the most-used neonic products.

Read this article:  

The EPA Finally Admitted That the World’s Most Popular Pesticide Kills Bees—20 Years Too Late

Posted in Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The EPA Finally Admitted That the World’s Most Popular Pesticide Kills Bees—20 Years Too Late

The Feds Just Sued Volkswagen Over Its Emissions Scandal

by MadieRamey4951 Posted on January 4, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit on Monday against Volkswagen over charges that the company installed illegal software on more than half a million vehicles sold in the United States that allowed them to cheat on emissions tests.

“Car manufacturers that fail to properly certify their cars and that defeat emission control systems breach the public trust, endanger public health and disadvantage competitors,” Assistant Attorney General John C. Cruden of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division said in a statement.

Back in September, the Environmental Protection Agency filed a citation carrying the possibility of billions of dollars in fines against Volkswagen after the agency discovered that 500,000 VW diesel-powered cars sold since 2009 were designed to deliberately emit much lower levels of harmful gases during official testing than during actual on-the-road driving. A month later, the scandal widened to include an additional 10,000 cars. By some estimates, the excess emissions caused by VW’s cars could contribute to thousands of deaths.

For VW, the fallout has been long and damning. The company’s share price fell off a cliff immediately after the first allegations and has only recovered a little bit in the months since. The CEO has been replaced. The episode prompted the EPA to overhaul its emissions testing procedures to better catch similar evasion tactics in the future. And the company now faces lawsuits from pissed-off drivers and car dealers.

The suit today represents the Obama administration’s first steps to follow up on the EPA’s allegations. The suit says VW could be liable for up to $6,500 in fines per vehicle—totaling to more than $3 billion—and adds that recalls or other possible remedies are still being considered. It also says criminal charges haven’t yet been ruled out. In a statement, a Volkswagen spokesperson said the company “will continue to work cooperatively with the EPA on developing remedies to bring the TDI vehicles into full compliance with regulations as soon as possible,” and that it “will continue to cooperate with all government agencies investigating these matters.”

This post has been updated.

Link: 

The Feds Just Sued Volkswagen Over Its Emissions Scandal

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Feds Just Sued Volkswagen Over Its Emissions Scandal

What’s the Link Between Terrorism and Climate Change?

by Alejand7284 Posted on December 10, 2015

Not even three weeks after the deadly terrorist attacks that struck Paris in November, President Obama acknowledged a connection between terrorism and climate change in a statement at COP21. The 12-day summit, at which UN leaders have convened to discuss strategies to combat climate change, is being held in Le Bourget, right in the heart of the city that was so recently struck by terror. In his speech, President Obama called the summit an act of defiance that proves nothing will deter us from building the future we want for our children.

Though Paris serves as a surface-level link between terrorism and climate change, this is hardly the first time weve heard of such a connection. At the November 14 Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders asserted that climate change continued to be the United States greatest threat, claiming that climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.”

What do politicians mean when they correlate terrorism with climate change? How does climate influence the growth of terrorism (if at all) and what does science have to say about the supposed link?

Climate change as a threat multiplier

In 2014, the United States Department of Defense published the Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, outlining defense and security issues in relation to climate change. The department warned that climate change was a threat multiplier, in that it stands to intensify already-acknowledged security threats such as resource scarcity, disease, drought and displacement. Regions that are ill-equipped to handle this onslaught of problems may be susceptible to the spread of extremism, according to the DOD.

These developments could undermine already-fragile governments that are unable to respond effectively or challenge currently‐stable governments, as well as increasing competition and tension between countries vying for limited resources, the paper states. These gaps in governance can create an avenue for extremist ideologies and condition that foster terrorism.

Climate change and migration

Its no secret that climate change is expected to cause massive problems related to migration. People are already beginning to seek refuge, with the worlds first climate refugeesa family from the Polynesian island nation of Tuvaluhaving been granted residency in New Zealand in 2014 due to rising tides.

Worldwide, the number of refugees (from all causes) is skyrocketing. In 2014, a staggering nearly 60 million people sought refuge in other countries due to war, poverty, resource scarcity, natural disasters and other problems, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Most of us are familiar with the current refugee crisis in Europe, but the problem extends to all corners of the globe. Unfortunately, these numbers show little promise of decreasing, with climate change threatening to displace an estimated 187 million people by 2100 if weather trends continue to follow the patterns anticipated by climate scientists.

In an interview with CBSs Face the Nation following the Nov. 14 debates, Senator Sanders expounded on his claim that climate change could exacerbate terrorism through migration issues.

… when you have drought, when people cant grow their crops, theyre going to migrate into cities, he said. And when people migrate into cities, and they dont have jobs, theres going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment. And people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al Qaeda and ISIS are using right now.

Climate change and conflict

According to many leading environmentalists, we need look no further than the current civil war in Syria for evidence of climate changes role in fueling extremist ideologies. In a recent speech, Secretary of State John Kerry said that while Syrias devastating drought is of course not the sole cause of Syrias current conflict, he believes it to be at least partially responsible.

And Kerry isnt the only one. A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and the implications of the recent Syrian drought found that climate set into motion resource scarcity, instability and fighting in the region.

Terrorism and the fight against it are complex issues. Wed be wrong to blame any one factor on the spread of extremism and the horror that has ensued because of it. But understanding a possible link between climate change and terrorism can help us keep the big picture in mind: A planet thats sustainable, fertile and has few extreme weather events and plentiful resources may help keep populations safer and less vulnerable to conflict.

Related
Can Sound Vibrations Reduce Pesticide Use?
These Photo Projects Give New Perspective to the Social Issues of Our Time
Who’s Benefitting from San Bernardino and Paris Most? Weapon Makers

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

See original article here: 

What’s the Link Between Terrorism and Climate Change?

Posted in alo, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Safer, Smith's, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What’s the Link Between Terrorism and Climate Change?

Flavored E-Cigarettes May Be Worse For You Than Nicotine

by YettaSummerfiel Posted on December 9, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

“An exotic fusion of pineapple and coconut with champagne infused blueberries.”

“Creamy milk chocolate and rich peanut butter flavors.”

No, these are not excerpts from the dessert menu at a fancy hotel. They’re some of the latest offerings from the makers of vape pens and e-cigarettes—which are the same thing, more or less. As e-cigs gain traction (sales are expected to soar 17-fold in the next 15 years), manufacturers are having a heyday concocting flavors that can be inhaled—an estimated 7,000 to date. Public health experts warn of the addictive nicotine in e-cigs and vaping fluids, and their potential to serve as a “gateway” to tobacco, especially for teens. But a new Harvard study instead took a hard look at those tantalizing flavors—and found that a majority, at least of the samples tested, contained chemicals linked to a dangerous lung disease.

Researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed various e-cig and vape pen liquids for the presence of three related chemicals—diacetyl, 2,3-pentanedione, and acetoin—that are also used in artificial butter flavorings. By the turn of the 21st century, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had deemed diacetyl safe to eat, but little was known about what happened when a person inhales it. Then, in the early 2000s, workers at several plants that manufacture microwave popcorn came down with a nasty lung disease after prolonged exposure to the fake-butter fumes. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigated cases of this so-called popcorn lung, and later released guidelines for dealing with diacetyl in the workplace, along with a list of foods that contain the chemical. “Current evidence points to diacetyl as one agent that can cause flavorings-related lung disease,” notes the CDC’s National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. NIOSH says it is uncertain whether the other two compounds pose health risks, but it points out their chemical similarities to diacetyl.

Now the popcorn-lung chemicals are turning up in vape pens. The Harvard researchers tested 51 e-cigarette flavorings they deemed appealing to youth—think “Cupcake” and “Alien Blood”—and found diacetyl in 37 of them. At least one of the three suspect chemicals was present in 47 of the 51 samples. The researchers could not determine conclusively that using an e-cig flavored with these chemicals is harmful. But they pointed out that “the heating, vaporization, and subsequent inhalation” creates “an exposure pathway” similar to that of the microwave popcorn workers. Two of the flavors tested—”menthol” and “tobacco”—do not appear on OSHA’s list of flavors likely to contain diacetyl.

Since they landed on the market in 2004, e-cigarettes and vape pens have been dogged by controversy. Fans claim they are far less toxic than regular cigarettes and might even help tobacco smokers quit. Public health officials counter that it’s too early to know very much about e-cigs’ health effects, especially on young people. (Their use among teens tripled from 2013 to 2014.) At least 43 states have placed age restrictions on the sale and/or possession of the products.

The FDA does not currently regulate e-cigarettes—it has stalled for years in proceeding with proposed rules that would allow it to regulate the devices as tobacco products. But given the new findings, the agency may want to take a closer look at the sweet flavors that make the nicotine go down.

Credit: 

Flavored E-Cigarettes May Be Worse For You Than Nicotine

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Flavored E-Cigarettes May Be Worse For You Than Nicotine

This Is How Much Money It Will Cost to Save the World

by ChristeLoewe Posted on December 8, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story originally appeared in the Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Finance is full of big numbers, and for almost every big number, there is another, even bigger number it should be compared to.

Climate change is no different. As world leaders meet for climate talks in Paris, here’s the big number: In 2014, the world invested $391 billion in low-carbon and climate-resilient infrastructure. And here’s the even bigger number: We should actually be spending $7 trillion dollars a year for the next decade, and even more later.

Continue Reading »

Continued here:  

This Is How Much Money It Will Cost to Save the World

Posted in alo, Anchor, eco-friendly, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Is How Much Money It Will Cost to Save the World

Take a hint, “clean coal.” The world is so over you

by NatishaMaur4838 Posted on December 4, 2015

Take a hint, “clean coal.” The world is so over you

By on 4 Dec 2015 4:05 pmcommentsShare

Like that old classmate still hanging around your hometown pub, playing pool, and talking about the great business idea that he had back in high school, clean coal is about to sidle up to the world’s barstool and — in a slightly slurred and defeated voice — tell you that, despite a few setbacks, it could still work.

You’ll smile and nod and pretend to be interested, but in truth, a lot’s happened since your days of joyriding around the suburbs and late-night Kmart runs. It’s 2015, and an old Volkswagen bus-turned-mobile Blockbuster just doesn’t seem like a lucrative idea anymore. Likewise, the promise of guilt-free fossil fuels in a time of dropping renewable energy prices and mounting clean coal disappointments seems a bit passe.

For a quick refresher, the basic idea behind clean coal is this: Instead of pumping CO2 directly into the atmosphere, coal plants equipped with carbon capture technology would just grab that CO2 on its way out of the plant and shove it back into the ground from whence it came. Simple, right? Well, not really. Here’s more from the AP:

In 2013, Norway pulled the plug on a major carbon capture project it had likened to the moon landing, citing spiraling costs. Another big setback came on Nov. 25, just days ahead of the U.N. climate talks in Paris, when Britain abruptly canceled 1 billion pounds ($1.5 billion) in funding for carbon capture technology, raising doubts about the fate of two projects competing for the money.

There’s currently only one clean coal plant up and running — the Boundary Dam power station in Saskatchewan, Canada — that was designed to capture about 1 million tons of CO2 annually, but managed less than half that during its first year, the AP reports.

Not to be left out, the U.S. has been working on its own clean coal plant down in Mississippi for almost a decade. Check out this Grist Special Report from former Grist fellow Sara Bernard for an in-depth look at that whole mess. The project has been mired in construction delays and unexpected costs since it was first proposed in 2006. Its initial price tag of $1.8 billion has risen to about $6.5 billion, and its construction, which began in 2010 and was supposed to be done by now, still trudges on.

According to the International Energy Agency and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, carbon capture technology on its own — as in, not necessarily attached to a power plant — might be a necessary tool in avoiding a 2-degree Celsius temperature rise. Fortunately, the independent technology has had somewhat more success than its clean coal application, although not by much. Here’s more from the AP:

There are 13 large-scale carbon capture projects in the world, collecting 26 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to the International Energy Agency. But that’s less than one one-thousandth of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

“There’s activity out there, but it’s not what various organizations would have hoped for,” said Juho Lipponen, who heads the IEA’s carbon capture unit.

In Paris, only eight of the 170 action plans submitted by individual nations point to carbon capture technology as a necessary mitigation tool, the AP reports:

Bill Hare, who heads the Climate Analytics institute in Berlin, said carbon capture may have missed its moment when investments didn’t take off despite a lot of “hype” a decade ago. Now, he said, the falling costs of renewable energy mean carbon capture has a lot of catching up to do.

“It’s probably harder to get this moving now than 10 years ago,” Hare said.

Likewise, Netflix and that VW emissions scandal will probably make your old buddy’s Blockbuster bus a harder sell today than it was 10 years ago. Although, let’s be real, it was a pretty killer idea back then.

Source:

‘Clean coal’ technology fails to capture world’s attention

, The Associated Press.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.


A Grist Special Series The Paris climate talks: Yes oui can!

Get Grist in your inbox

Advertisement

View post: 

Take a hint, “clean coal.” The world is so over you

Posted in Anchor, Brita, FF, GE, ONA, Radius, Safer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Take a hint, “clean coal.” The world is so over you

The Government Buried Some Really Important Herbicide News Right Before Thanksgiving

by JohnBorowski Posted on November 30, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the Environmental Protection Agency revoked its controversial approval of a novel herbicide mix, sending shares of its maker, chemical giant Dow, down nearly 3 percent in Wednesday trading.

The product, Enlist Duo, is the signature weed-killing cocktail of Dow AgroScience, Dow’s ag subsidiary. It’s composed of two endocrine-disrupting chemicals, 2-4-D and glypohosate, that have landed on the World Health Organization’s lists of “possible” and “probable” carcinogens, respectively. Dow markets it for use alongside corn and soybean varieties that have been genetically engineered to withstand the combined herbicides, to counter the rapid rise of weeds that have evolved to resist glyphosate alone. Approved by the EPA last year, Enlist Duo is the company’s “crown jewel,” a Wall Street analyst recently told The Wall Street Journal. The US Department of Agriculture thinks farmers will embrace it rapidly—it will boost 2,4-D use by as much as 600 percent by 2020, the agency projects.

How inconvenient for Dow’s shareholders, then, that the EPA has changed its mind. Last Tuesday, the agency petitioned the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals to revoke its approval of Enlist Duo, temporarily barring farmers from using it.

The reason for the reversal is fascinating. The decision hinges on the so-called “synergistic” effects of combined pesticides. When you combine two or more herbicides, do you merely get the weed-slaying properties of each—or do you also get something new and greater than the sum of the parts? There’s not a lot of data on that. Generally, pesticides are tested for safety in isolation, even though farmers tend to use several at once in the field. Yet studies have repeatedly shown—see here and here—that chemical combinations can be much more toxic than you’d expect from analyzing each of their components.

When the EPA reviewed safety data supplied by Dow, it found “no indication of synergism between the two Enlist Duo ingredients for mammals, freshwater fish, and freshwater invertebrates,” its court petition states, and thus it concluded that the “mixture of the two ingredients does not show a greater toxicity compared to either parent compound alone.”

But later, agency officials looked at Dow’s application to the US Patent Office for Enlist Duo, originally filed in 2013, and found something quite different: “claims of ‘synergistic herbicidal weed control.'” The EPA was not amused. “Specifically, Dow did not submit to EPA during the registration process the extensive information relating to potential synergism it cited to the Patent Office,” the agency complained to the court. “EPA only learned of the existence of that information after the registrations were issued and only recently obtained the information.”

In others words, Dow was assuring the EPA that its proposed cocktail was really nothing new—just the combination of two already-approved agrichemicals—while simultaneously telling the patent office that Enlist did indeed bring new and different weed-leveling properties to the farm field. In short, two different messages for two different audiences—the EPA sees potentially heightened toxicity from synergistic effects, while the investors who pore over patents might see a potential blockbuster in an herbicide mix that’s more than just the sum of its two components.

Dow has now handed that “extensive information” on Enlist Duo’s synergistic effects to the EPA. In a press release, Dow AgroSciences President and CEO Tim Hassinger vowed to resolve the EPA’s issues “in the next few months, in time for the 2016 crop use season.” Given that the EPA relies on company-supplied data to make these decisions, he’s probably right—the EPA’s action last week will amount to a speed bump on the road to Enlist Duo’s conquering of the nation’s vast corn/soybean belt. But considering the confusion so far, now might be the time for the EPA to demand independent testing of this powerful and potentially soon-to-be ubiquitous mix.

Meanwhile, last Wednesday’s action marks the second time in November the EPA has seen fit to revoke registration of a would-be blockbuster Dow pesticide. Just a week before, the agency nixed its approval of the insecticide sulfoxaflor, months after a federal appeals court found that Dow had delivered the agency “flawed and limited data” about the chemical’s impact on honeybees.

More:  

The Government Buried Some Really Important Herbicide News Right Before Thanksgiving

Posted in alo, Anchor, Crown, eco-friendly, Everyone, FF, GE, Green Light, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Government Buried Some Really Important Herbicide News Right Before Thanksgiving

The Feds Just Accused Volkswagen of an Unbelievable Scheme to Evade Pollution Laws

by SamualKaufman Posted on September 18, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Volkswagen produced hundreds of thousands of cars with a device made to intentionally evade air pollution standards, according to a citation issued today by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA alleges that nearly 500,000 VW cars sold in the United States over the last several years were equipped with the device, which the EPA says enabled the onboard computer to detect when the car was undergoing an emissions test. At that time, the engine would operate in a way that complied with emissions standards; at all other times, the car would produce emissions of harmful gases up to 40 times greater than allowed by federal law. The primary gas in question is nitrogen oxide, which causes smog, which is a leading cause of respiratory ailments.

This table from the citation lists the models that were allegedly outfitted with the illegal device. All of the cars in question had diesel engines:

EPA

The EPA cites a 2014 study by the International Council on Clean Transportation that found a troubling gap between real-world and laboratory emissions in some diesel cars, without naming specific manufacturers.

“When you test it in the lab, they looked great,” said Anup Thiruvengadam, one of the study’s authors. “But when you actually drive them around, emissions were much higher.”

The citation issued today lifted the curtain on the specific cars in question and delineates the federal laws VW is accused of violating. The EPA is continuing to investigate the charges and has passed the citation to the Justice Department, where it will be up to federal prosecutors to prove the charges. Volkswagen could be compelled to fix all the cars and pay up to $3,750 per car (roughly $18 billion altogether) in fines.

In a statement, a Volkswagen spokesperson said the company was cooperating with the investigation but declined to comment further.

From:

The Feds Just Accused Volkswagen of an Unbelievable Scheme to Evade Pollution Laws

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, Green Light, LG, ONA, Oster, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Feds Just Accused Volkswagen of an Unbelievable Scheme to Evade Pollution Laws

Republicans Have a Cunning New Plan to Deal With the Iran Agreement

by Elissa01Uvz Posted on September 9, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

For some reason, I’ve been a whirlwind of blogging activity over the past week or two. Don’t ask me why. Partly, though, I think it’s because it’s so hard to take anything seriously lately. It’s all Donald Trump and Kim Davis and dumb tax plans and other political theater. So I’ve ended up writing lots of short, not-entirely-serious posts about things that amuse me. That’s pretty much all I can find.

Take my lunch break today. I learned two things. First, I like Round Table pizza and I wish my local store hadn’t closed. Second, Republicans have a shiny new plan for dealing with their inevitable defeat on the Iran deal. Max Fisher explains the latest outbreak of serious governing from today’s Republican Party:

The new hotness among Republicans is that they shouldn’t bother voting to disapprove of the Iran nuclear deal, and instead should vote for a resolution that, according to Politico’s Jake Sherman, “would delay a disapproval vote because they believe Obama has not disclosed some elements of the deal.”

….Republicans, in this new plan, would argue that President Obama didn’t live up to his promise to fully inform Congress about the Iran nuclear deal….The alleged “secret side deal” is an agreement between the International Atomic Energy Agency (the UN nuclear watchdog) and Iran over how the IAEA will conduct certain inspections and verification procedures of Iranian facilities.

The IAEA has such agreements with every country where it works….It is not a “side deal,” nor is its existence secret; the nuclear deal requires the IAEA to monitor Iranian facilities, so naturally the IAEA was going to work out the logistical details of that with Tehran. As nuclear experts Mark Hibbs and Thomas Shea explained recently in the Hill, anyone with the most basic knowledge of the IAEA understands that this is how it works, and that this secrecy ultimately helps the IAEA — and thus the US — against Iran’s nuclear program.

….The controversy is thus by definition impossible to resolve. And that’s precisely the point….The future of Republican opposition to the Iran nuclear deal will thus probably look something like the never-ending political circus over the Benghazi attacks. There will be various conspiracy theories and outrage stories that will live on for years in right-wing media long after they have been debunked. You will hear about “Obama’s secret side deal with the IAEA” from at least one family member at Thanksgiving.

It’s hard to work up the energy to write about this stuff seriously. It just doesn’t deserve it. It’s transparent political theater designed to feed the outrage machine, and it’s apparently getting more attention from Republicans than passing a budget, which they have only a few days to finish up. And even if they do eventually get around to the budget, it promises to be merely another round of political theater as tea partiers vie to force a government shutdown instead.

So what’s a hardworking political blogger to do? Relax and figure that this too shall pass, I suppose. In the meantime, it’s gonna be a long campaign.

Excerpt from – 

Republicans Have a Cunning New Plan to Deal With the Iran Agreement

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Republicans Have a Cunning New Plan to Deal With the Iran Agreement